#BOOK STACK FREE#
In an open-stack library, patrons are free to enter the stacks to browse the collection and retrieve items that interest them. In the design and administration of any library, a key decision is whether its stacks will be open or closed. Although the bookstacks were decorated and very simply embellished, they are of machine-age industrial design. He designed the shelves so that they could adjust to book sizes using a simple lug system without the need for any bolts or fixings.
Green designed the stacks to be modular, able to be erected several stories high as a single freestanding structural entity incorporating staircases and floors, and even capable of supporting a roof structure. The top surface of the U section was ground, polished and 'lacquered' (the constituents of the lacquer are not known). Although the structure was of cast iron, the shelves were made from strips of thin U section steel, designed to be as light as an equivalent pine shelf. The Library of Congress bookstacks were designed and patented by Green. Notable examples are the Widener Library at Harvard and the seven level stack supporting the Rose Reading Room of the New York Public Library.
#BOOK STACK INSTALL#
The contract was won by the Snead and Company Ironworks, which went on to install its standardized design in libraries around the country. He made a number of alterations to the Gore Hall design, including the use of all-metal shelving. The engineer in charge of construction was Bernard Richardson Green. This is where this type of book storage was first used. The Thomas Jefferson Building of the Library of Congress was completed in 1897. Library of Congress and the Snead system The building's external walls act as an envelope but provide no significant structural support. Even the load of the building's roof, and of any non-shelving spaces above the stacks (such as offices), may be transmitted to the building's foundation through the shelving system itself. In contrast to the structural relationship found in most buildings, the floors of these bookstacks did not support the shelving, but rather the reverse, the floors being attached to, and supported by, the shelving framework. Ware designed a stack for Gore Hall at Harvard University. In 1857, multilevel stacks with grated iron floors were installed in the British Library. 2 Library of Congress and the Snead systemįrench architect Henri Labrouste, shortly after making pioneering use of iron in the Bibliotheque Sainte-Genevieve of 1850, created a four-story iron stack for the Bibliothèque nationale de France.
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